North Korean Restaurant Worker Interviewed by the Korea Times
There is an interesting interview in the Korea Times with one of the North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea back in 2016 I recommend everyone read:
The big question that so many have been asking: Did everyone want to escape?
Korea Times
A: It seems like a clear question, but the answer isn’t clear. Not all employees working at the Chinese restaurant wanted to come to South Korea.
The context is that the work in China was tougher than we had expected. We had good situations in North Korea, so we were often openly wondering why we were working so hard; it was not as golden as it had been presented to us in North Korea. Therefore, most of us agreed to seek better working conditions in a different country.
We were not ignorant about the outside world. When I was in North Korea, I certainly knew about the possibility of escaping to South Korea, and from what I knew about the others, they did too. But we all had good lives in North Korea; why should we go to South Korea?
In discussing seeking better working conditions, about six or seven employees left. That group took taxis to the North Korean embassy to make it clear they were not participating in an escape.
You can read the rest of the interview at the link, but I also found it very interesting that she never met the Minbyun lawyers that were claiming that the North Koreans were kidnapped and wanted to go back.
